The present invention relates to snow throwers and other handle-operated, motorized equipment and, in particular, to apparatus mountable thereto for facilitating turning with a minimum turning radius and operator effort.
With the advent of motorized lawn, garden and snow removal equipment, most outdoor chores have become much less of a burden to the homeowner. Such devices, be it a lawnmower, cultivator or snow thrower, have also proliferated to the point where they are now obtainable in a wide variety of sizes, styles and constructions. These include versions powered to support the operator while providing motive power to the drive wheels or for economical designs, merely supplying power to the drive wheels or, alternatively, relying on the operator to push the unit. Thus, depending upon the normal operating conditions, the weight of the equipment, the numbers of wheels, and the drive train construction, the energy expended by the operator may be suitably controlled--for a price.
Of the these various types of equipment, two of the most commonly found are two-wheeled versions of the snow thrower and garden cultivator. These devices however, even though labor saving, present some difficulty to the operator in those instances where it is necessary to alter the travel direction of the unit. That is, for a snow blower with a direct drive coupling to the wheels, in order to turn the thrower in a reasonably small turn radius, it is necessary for the operator to physically manhandle the unit by tilting the unit rearward and dragging it to one side or the other, before re-leveling the unit and continuing in the altered travel direction. A garden cultivator may similarly be turned, but there the rear end of the unit is typically lifted to free the ground anchor sufficiently to permit the dragging of the unit by its handles to one side or the other. While, overall, the use of either the foregoing devices saves a great deal of energy, they still tax the operator, each time it is necessary to redirect the unit's direction of travel.
Heretofore and for more expensive units, in lieu of the aforementioned lifting, tilting and dragging, expensive reardrive differentials and/or transmissions have been included in various such devices for disengaging drive power to selected wheels to overcome the machine's reluctance to turn. Alternatively, separate braking mechanisms have been applied to the wheels and whereby one or the other of the wheels may be stopped, while providing drive power to the other wheel, with the machine pivoting about the stopped wheel.
As mentioned though, such luxuries are rather costly and not economically feasible for many lower end models of the mentioned devices.